That Works for Me!

Well, I am SO excited to be part of a wonderful effort by two great gals to bring all the greatest "Works for Me" Wednesday tips on the blog We Are That Family (one of my favs!) together in one place!

Think "Pinterest", but with someone else having "pinnned" over 800 awesome tips for you already! ...There are categories like 'parenting', 'organization', 'homeschool', 'crafts' ..and so many more. There are some really great tips in this ebook - I have been reading up on moving tips and organization ideas.

Its enough to make a gal giddy! 

I am so excited to see one of my favorite "works for me" tips on page 147 ...tip #600 by yours truly ;)

To celebrate the brand spanking new "That Works for Me" ebook - we are going to do a little giveaway of a fresh off the internet press copy!

First, check out the That Works for Me website for a little intro to this fantastic effort  ..check out the video and get a glimpse of what great work this ebook will benefit (While you are there, you may even find a chance to win a $150 cleaning gift card!)!

* Then, come back here and let me know you did!

For an extra entry follow That Works for Me on Facebook

* Then, come back and let me know you did!

For another, connect with the contributors and find even more great ideas on Pinterest

* Then ..you got it girls ...come back and here and let me know you are all over it!

Finally, we will draw for a winner in ONE WEEK!

Meanwhile, if you just can't stand it Click here to visit wearethatfamily. to purchase the "That Works for Me" ebook for $8 ....but use this code: SAVE1 to save $1! ...it's even available for the Kindle!

Have fun girls! ...I know I am LOVING it already!

Who Says?!

I am in a rebellious mood these last few weeks - really, it been a bit longer than that but I think it was more subconscious until about then.

Really, rebellion could characterize the journey of having "Everything You Need" and "Living Peacefully Less Stressed" in a nutshell. 

I am feeling quite rebellious against what the world tells me I need to be/do. I am feeling resistant to my culture and society ..the one that tells me how I am supposed to look, how my kids are supposed to act, how I should spend my time, how much money I should save, how clean how my house should be, how my marriage should look, what I should eat and how creative I should be.

I am feeling a bit frustrated with the degree of weight that I feel the world around me places on me and my girls. "My girls" being all of us who strive to be all that we know we want to be, and even more so what God wants us to be.

I find myself in a most disrespectful banter with the "world" when I feel challenged that my kids should fit the mold of the 5:30am - 5:30pm lifestyles of the "typical" school age child, or when I feel like I am less than perfect because I haven't fit into a size 10 since college. I feel like we are just slammed with so many different "must do's" from the world around us ..and I feel downright irritated by it.

I want to just throw up my hands and say "WHO SAYS?!"

Who says ...that my house has to be presentable at all times?
Who says ...that my laundry has to be caught up every day ...or that we couldn't minimize it by letting every kid have 5 shirts and 3 pairs of shorts ONLY!
Who says ...that I or my kids have to a have 52 different church outfits so we are wearing something different each week?
Who says ...that I have to be running myself ragged from morning til night, dragging my kids behind me?
Who says ...that my kids have to be involved in every extracurricular activity I can find for them to do?
Who says ...that I have to wear a size less-than-12?
Who says  ...that my toenails have to be perfectly manicured all summer?
Who says ...that my clothes have to be from somewhere other than Walmart (or Old Navy ...either one).
Who says  ...that I HAVE to coupon to manage my pennies well?
Who says  ...that I have drive a car that matches everyone else?
Who says ...that I have to have a house that is perfectly decorated OR that it has to have a certain number of square feet?
Who says...that I have to have an updated blog at all times?
Who says ..that I have to compare myself to any of those chics on Pinterest? ..or better yet, have the creativity to do any of the stuff on there?!

If God didnt say it, then He doesnt ask it of you. He doesnt ask it of us.

I am convinced that if we were to simply get rid of the stressful things that GOD didnt ask of us, we would be living much more peacefully.

This world is unfair in its expectations. There is not a girl in the world who can meet them. Trust me.

I think as God's gals we need to be more rebellious ...we need to ask ourselves "Who says?!" ...and if God didn't demand it of us then we can let it go.

Pin that on your board :P

{Disclaimer ..I am NOT a Pinterest hater. I admit though that i have to limit myself lest I start heading down a spiral of "not good enough" feelings ...anyone else? No? I just the only one then? ...hmm.}

Good Work

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” 2 Corinthians 9:8

 

” …abound in every good work” …don’t we desire for that to refer to what we do with our resources as women of God?

“Good work” is something that I think we struggle with, though. I think we struggle because we know it is so much a part of what God has willed for us, and we desire to be in His will. We want to be the women God intends for us, and so we know that part of that is doing good work.

But we so often are unsure of that “good work” may be ..aren’t we? Does the desire itself not leave us drowning in a wealth of possible good works? We are tempted to take on good things past what we can really do, because afterall ..its good…right?

I think that God is not as demanding as we are about what good work we are to do. I think that his guidelines for good work are less overwhelming than ours. Despite this incredible statement “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  Eph 2:10 …I think that we put more pressure on ourselves than God does.

To relieve some of that pressure we have to define “good work”.  I think a lot of the pressure that we create about what good work we do (and what we give ourselves credit for), is about what we consider “good”.

 When we say we have been created for good work, I think we may be tempted to picture only lofty things like taking care of orphans in the Philippines, and digging wells in Ethiopia. Of course, these are good work. But are they any more “good” than holding the hand of your child or taking time to connect to your husband when he is discouraged?

I think both types of good work is work that is blessed … we should not think of our "good work" as only being those things that Christians everywhere will get up and applaud.

You see, because “Good Work” is simply doing what you do in a way that brings God glory.

We are told that  “… whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:17   …That is your Good Work.

If we combine that command with the promise that “.. God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need..”  …we can assume that God is given us all things at all times in order that “whatever we do in word or deed” we are able to “do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

There are a lot of implications if we believe that to be true:

…it means that everything from changing diapers, to digging wells can be Good Work; anything from cuddling with your child, to committing your life to caring for them in the Philippines is Good Work. Its anything that you do to the glory of God. Now, that being said I think that there are somethings that are better work that others for us (but we will get to that later).

….it means that if it is not glorifying to God then he didn’t give you “all things at all times” for it.

….it means that your Good Work may include things that don’t seem that ” good” …because “all 

things” is pretty inclusive of everything, good and bad, fun or not fun, easy or hard…but if we are doing it to God’s glory then it is good.

…it means that your Good Work is proportionally supplied. You have what you need for “whatever you do” …no matter how much you need to do it.

We are going to explore these ideas more this coming week. My hope is that when we better understand that God has given “all that you need”  for a reason, then we will use it better. My prayer is that with a better understanding of why he has given us what we need, then we be better supplied for “all things, at all times.”

May your Good Work be well supplied today, sisters.  He is faithful.

_______

This post was orginally posted on the Seeds of Faith for Women website on March 12th, 2012

you can find it here.

While my words have been few these last weeks in relation to my public writing they are on fire in other writing endeavors! I am making some wonderful progress on the Everything You Need bible study and finding so much blessing in that!

I am also in the process of anticipating a move in the next few months, which is always a big inspiration to me to get things simplified. Our move is largely in hopes of doing just that. In the face of those changes, I am excited to participate in Project Simplify 2012! 

Interestingly, I had already started pondering ways to simplify my boys and kids stuff, which is right were we are starting this week! Wahoo! I LOVE it when that happens! 

See you later this week! 

Update: Okay, so I wont lie, that did NOT happen :) Honestly, I am having a hard time juggling all the things I want and need to do right now! But, I have 100 things I want to say on here, a 1000 things I want encourage God's women with. I will work on getting it to this place ...meanwhile, instead of deleting this little reminder that I didn't meet this particular goal I am going to let it stand as a reminder that God makes other plans for us sometimes and they don't always include decluttering ;)

Filing in Binders: UPDATE

Well, I wanted to give you an update on one of my favorite Less Stress Tools  ...Filing in Binders.

I posted this a little more than 6 months ago...this was my inspiration:

I started where I was, meaning not with all the supplies to make mine a cute as Jenna's at I Heart Organizing. But I loved the concept and wanted to initiate the process right away.

Here is what I started with, using what I had with big plans to cute it up ASAP:

Well, here we are six months later:

SO, clearly I havent gotten to the cutesy part yet (still REALLY want to!). For now,  these babies are stuck away in a cabinet. This works good for me, because they are accessible and organized, but not seen.

What I have lacked in the time and effort to make them more presentable, though I have made up by how much I USE them.

Seriously, this one of my favorite Less Stress Tips ever!

I love that I have a place to store those pieces of paper I just can't part with. Also everything in them is so accessible. I can so easily look at a bill from last month or file away a medical receipt in my Taxes binder (currently my favorite binder as of last night when I was doing the taxes!).

Its easy to manage, store and use...it's a winner all the way around!

Filing into binders has been so effective for me that I have bled it into several other areas of my home. I make binders for everything :)

The list of binders I started with included:  Monthly Bills, Taxes, Important Papers, Insurance and Warranties/Instruction Books (click here to learn about how I use those).

Since using this system for a bit I have added: Lesson Plans, School Work (for my oldest son, to keep his work samples together), and Household (also includes my Stress Less Journal), Everything You Need (for work on the EYN bible study), ThirtyOne (for my home business) and a second Warranties binder.

Basically, anything and everything that has paper, that needs ordered and collected goes in its own binder.

I will tell you, as I suspected this system earned its wings when I had to do this years taxes. Since I started the binder system in June of last year, I had a little catch up to get my Taxes binder up to date. I had to collect a few receipts for the year up to that point but since then its been easy to collect and store any more that have happened since then.

Sitting down with the taxes this week, it was so nice to have everything we needed to itemize our medical, education, work expenses and charity contributions. No scrounging for receipts, no digging through file folders or trying to remember what money we spent.  Just open the binder and it was all there!

This system has been a great tool in my home! ...tell me, do you us it or another system like that works well for you?